


The Scrape Of Steel Against Our Bloody Heartstrings (Oh, Lover, I'm Afraid)

by Unoriginal_Username, willowcat33



Series: I'll Always See Behind Your Smoke And Mirrors [1]
Category: Escape the Night (Web Series)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Gore, Camping, Death, Demonic Possession, Demons, Dreams and Nightmares, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Guns, Horror, Insanity, Kind-Of Suicides, Knives, Multi, Murder, Murder-Suicide, Puppets, individual warnings in each chapter, its a slasher my dudes, ocs arent like cast inserts just support characters at the end and of course viLLAIN, so much murder, this was originally scheduled for halloween sOO, yeah this is p rough please mind the tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-01-15 15:40:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21255725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unoriginal_Username/pseuds/Unoriginal_Username, https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowcat33/pseuds/willowcat33
Summary: Joey Graceffa has been murdered. Now, his grieving friends continue on with the camp he'd been planning for them- but none of them truly know what they're getting into.When they start getting picked off, one by one, and with no idea of who's behind it, will anyone survive this place? Or will they all see Joey again much sooner than intended?





	1. Don't Trust A Sunset (When Storm Clouds Are On The Horizon)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chaos units 1&2 teamed up to make this fic,, tealina frennship for the WIN
> 
> tws: murder and murder scenes, blood and gore, corpse, knife mention, grief, panic  
stay safe and let us know if we miss any tws!! we probably won't but yknow just in case

The camp _was_ set for the weekend beginning October 5th, but with all that’s happened in the last few weeks, it gets moved to the 26-27th - the earliest Saf could wrangle everything into place for with a few angry phonecalls and a dozen cups of coffee to go off of. Whilst not all of their friends could come, many of them wracked with grief or just plain busy, enough of them could make it to make the trip worthwhile- which provided a much needed sliver of comfort. It wasn't much, but it was _some_ good news, and many members of the suffering friend group clung to it.

Luckily, ‘enough’ filled the 6 cabins that had been rented, making them all worth it. Which was good - this trip had meant so much to Joey so it was important that it went ahead. They owed their departed friend that much, at least.

A lot of the people who did make it were hyper aware of the campsite’s meaning- back when he was a child, these were Joey's stomping grounds. He would play in the woods with friends for hours on end, making up whole fantasy worlds in his brain, with only the aid of whoever was with him at the time and his surroundings for inspiration. As a result, almost everything about the place brought back memories (some happy, some sad, but most of them bittersweet) of the recently deceased Joey. If ghosts were real, this would be his haunting grounds, most likely (and of course Joey is dramatic enough to haunt a place).

But ghosts _aren't_ real, of course, and Joey is _gone_, so they all need to stop seeing him in every tree trunk and hearing his voice in the wind. It will only make them feel worse.

Saf and Colleen are the first to arrive, of course, since they organised the damn thing, and they claim the left bedroom of Cabin Two - the right room is for Matt and Ro, when they get here. No one would be breaking the two sibling-not-siblings apart.

Their room is simple yet cosy- two beds that they push together easily to make one bed big enough for the both of them, a wardrobe, a desk and chair, and two large, locking cupboards stacked on top of each other in the corner. As well as this, there's also a bunch of other miscellaneous furniture, including a couple of houseplants here and there, that help make the room feel more homey, in a pleasant way. The room's palette is mostly warm and soft browns, off-whites and light creams, with the odd splash of green - it's really quite pretty, both Saf and Colleen agree. 

Saf quickly claims the top locker whilst Colleen takes the bottom - ‘Fitting,’ Colleen had remarked with a wink, causing Safiya to laugh and shake her head fondly at her girlfriend - and they both stow their bags away in the cubby holes before proceeding to lock them, pocketing the keys for safekeeping. (Saf took them, she doesn’t trust Colleen with keys to important things.) She grabs her little plan of who’s in who’s cabin before going out to sit in the centre of the little campsite, settling herself comfortably around the unlit fire circle, drumming her fingers against the crisp, well-loved, wood and waiting for everyone else.

-

It takes a while, but by the time the sun has started to slip into the horizon, the whole gang is assembled and starting to settle in. Gabbie, Destorm, Alex and Tana, whilst they’re some of the last to arrive, take Cabin One - Gabbie and Destorm in the left bedroom, and Alex and Tana in the right (though absolutely no-one believes for a second that they’ll stay in those rooms).

Rosanna and Matt occupy the second bedroom of Cabin Two, as planned, whilst Cabin Three is filled by Sierra, Lele, Shane, and GloZell. 

Manny, Bretman and Tyler take Cabin Four, hanging a pair of little gay pride flags on either side of the door. They try not to think about the empty fourth bed - the one that should have been Joey's. 

In Cabin Five, Tim, Matt, Eva and Oli will be staying (Oli had stated who would be in which room, though no one exactly needed to ask, and both the Brit and Matt had flushed furiously when Colleen dryly responded that it was obvious.) And finally, in Six, Andrea (Brooks, not Russett, there had been a whole debacle about that), Calliope, Jesse and Liza take up residence.

That first evening at camp feels almost melancholy and nostalgic. The friends all sit around the campfire, watching the flames rise and fall, dancing its own foxtrot of heat and light. They cook smores - some actually well made, guided by Ro, and some apparently deliberately burnt to a crisp for the hell of it. They sing campfire songs, voices echoing into the cool night air like a symphony of warmth melting their hearts. Tim changes the lyrics of a few, prompting some playful slaps and loud protests of ‘not in the presence of the children!’ (referring to Ro, of course.)

They have fun (at least, they try to and give the illusion that they are) at the campfire. Tim cracks jokes (notably trying to get a reaction out of Andrea, who's mostly buried in her phone, texting Justine- it's classic Andrea to get so caught up in doting on her girlfriend that she becomes almost unaware of her surroundings) that are unbelievably corny and cheesy, yet still funny. 

Eventually, Tim succeeds in his goal and whoops, nearly smacking Matt in the nose when he throws his hands up in a celebratory gesture - luckily, Matt manages to duck out of the way as he laughs. Tim apologizes with a playful kiss on the nose later, despite the fact that Matt insists he wasn’t hurt and chides Tim that he doesn’t need an excuse to kiss him- they’ve been officially dating for a while, after all.

And yet, they're all _achingly_ aware of the gap in their dynamics that Joey should be filling. The police still haven't caught the killer (and with the trail of murders in their area, Joey included, that's very concerning) and seem to be struggling very much with the case, which is quite disheartening for his grieving friends. What they want, no, what they need is some damn closure. That's all. Because then they can all start to grieve properly and not focus on the tiny details of the murder in desperate hopes to find something, _anything_ that could be considered a clue.

But they always come up short and end up left empty handed and even more disappointed than they were before they even started searching.

Alex has been one of the people most invested in the search for information- incredibly stubborn, he was always following any next possible thread of clues eagerly until it ran out for good, no matter how little hope he or anyone else had left. He never tires of the search, working on ideas every free second he has, constantly working doggedly to bring whoever did this to his friend to justice.

But now, as he sits around this fire, curled up comfortably next to DeStorm, and with Gabbie and Tana within arm's reach (which is about the only place where he’d want them to be) he sighs. The sigh is full of exhaustion and hopelessness and a million words he holds back because he’s too exhausted to say aloud. He knows that no amount of hard work or dedication can bring his friend back from the dead. And it's not the sleepless nights, the endless searching and crying, or the constant need to be on the lookout for anything, that hurts the most. It's this. The knowledge that no matter what he does, or how hard he tries or how long he spends searching, at the end of the day? Joey Graceffa will still be dead. 

He hates that. He hates that life is so _unfair_\- Joey never deserved anything like what he got!

The image of his friend’s corpse flashes through his brain - throat slashed open, his face bloodless, as gaunt and as white as a sheet, blood absolutely _coating_ his kitchen floor - and he shudders, curling closer to DeStorm, who tucks an arm around him in a comforting gesture. It’s familiar, and in that way it’s the most reassuring thing he could do. He tries to settle into the warmth, but part of him still feels cold, cold like he’ll never be warm again. He subconsciously feels Tana wordlessly take his hand in hers, though, and that certainly doesn’t hurt. 

The fact that Alex himself was the one who found the body didn't help his mental state, either. He almost felt a sense of responsibility for his friend, which made no rational sense, but was true all the same. So, sitting at the campfire, at the camp that was meant to be for _Joey_, and Joey's birthday nonetheless, made him feel as if he was taking a space not meant for him.

-

_Alex had no idea what was about to happen as he strolled to Joey's apartment that night. He'd just been trying to do a good turn- Joey hadn't been very well, and was having trouble getting out and about, so Alex had offered to go grocery shopping for him, to save Joey having to do something so draining._

_He'd been whistling a tune as he'd unlocked and pushed open the front door. Alex called out for Joey, yet got no response. This wasn't too concerning for Alex, since he assumed he'd been feeling sick and had gone to bed._

_So, he'd decided to go and put Joey's groceries away, or to at least set them down on the kitchen counter. But when he entered the kitchen, the groceries were the least of his worries._

_He'd only just set the paper bags down when he turned around to see the deed, pale face of Joey Graceffa's panicked blue eyes staring through him. Lifeless. Dead. A corpse. His _friend_ was a corpse._

_It took him a minute to realise that shit, he _needs_ to _do something,_ and from that point on, Alex’s memories are shaky, a blur of panicked phone calls and the sharp snap of grief in his heart._

-

After a while, the campfire burns low, and people start retreating to their cabins, tiredness putting weights to their eyes and lead in their bones. A sort of hush settles over the cabins, and the lights go out one by one as everyone turns in for the night, surrounded by friends and loved ones, everyone taking comfort in the fact that tomorrow is a new day, and maybe, just maybe, things will look up. The sun will come out, and everyone can take a deep breath and relax.

Gabbie kisses Alex goodnight (though she _does_ sweetly tell him that if he wakes her up he’ll never see another sunrise), and after gently depositing a half-asleep Tana onto her bed and more or less into her sleeping bag, Destorm retreats to his room with a yawn loud enough to wake up the entire camp. 

Just as it should be.

_Yeah_, Alex thinks as he tucks the blanket tightly around himself, and yawns (although much more quieter than his boyfriend). _Relaxing sounds real good right about now._

-

One thing that all the residents of all the cabins _don't_ notice is the presence just at the corners of their shining, blissfully ignorant eyes, resting in the shadows of its own personal playground, creeping through every line of darkness cast, unseen and unheard but still all too real, real and far more terrifying than any ghost story.

As the lights flicker off, one by one, and the whole camp is plunged into deafening silence and immeasurable darkness, the corners of their mouth tilt upward ever so slightly, and an unheard laugh echoes through the starless night.

These ones will do nicely.

“Rest up, little ones.” they whisper. “The games will begin, soon....". And with the unseen smile still playing on their crimson lips, they dissolve back onto the black smoke from whence they came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woop! first chap! please leave a comment if you enjoyed and we will see you next week with chapter two!
> 
> (these are just gonna be titles not summaries) next chapter: Little Copper Fixer Upper!  
💖💖💖💖💖  
\- tea and alina


	2. Little Copper Fixer Upper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *throws this out and dissapears back into the void*
> 
> tws: murder, gore, blood, panic, kkinda ptsd type things?? alex is suffering because of what he saw with joey and it seems as if history repeats itself that sort of thing, smoke demon shit, people being trapped

It might only be four in the morning, but Calliope is awake. She always rises before the dawn, to give her regards to the stars before they all hide away for the day. It's an odd habit, she knows, but at least these days she normally has company. 

Alison almost always has trouble sleeping, so she often comes and sits with Calliope on the rusty metal balcony of their apartment, the whole world silent, peaceful, and still for just a moment, occasionally unsettled by a shared kiss or the soft brush of fingertips as an arm is wrapped comfortingly around the other to shield from the cold.

Calliope lives for these moments - especially the nights when Mortimer comes to sit with them, dragging a couple of blankets with him, and then they tease their boyfriend softly about his sleepiness, and then he eventually ends up living up to the playful taunts by falling asleep on someone. It's quite endearing, actually. And of course, the blankets tend to help with the whole not-freezing-to-death thing.

Out at camp, she's technically alone - though her sleeping friends are close by - and as a result, the night tends to feel like it belongs to her, even just for a while. She wanders the area for a good hour, skimming stones across the lake, humming songs to no one but herself and the stars- and Alison and Mortimer, wherever they were at the moment, probably at home. She hopes they‘re looking up at the same sky.

Around five, an hour later, the chill is starting to creep into her bones, so she finishes her melodies and, wrapping her arms around herself, trails back to her cabin.

She gently pushes the door open and goes inside, slipping off her now slightly muddy boots and putting them on the rack by the door. Calliope is being incredibly careful here, with the sole purpose of not waking her cabinmates up at what most people would call an ungodly hour. But something doesn’t feel right. There’s a sense of tension in the air that she can’t think of an immediate cause for, which is concerning and alarming in and of itself. That, and a thick metallic scent in the air, tangy and concerning- she can’t place her finger on what it is, but she feels like she  _ should  _ recognise it.

Carefully, Calliope goes back to her and Andrea’s room- and then promptly stops in the doorway with a disjointed gasp, nearly tripping as her limbs try to catch up with her suddenly frozen brain.

Not two hours ago, when she'd left, her roommate, Andrea, had been sleeping peacefully in her sleeping bag, snoring slightly, curled up in one of the weirdest sleeping positions Calliope had ever witnessed.

But now, that's most definitely not the case. 

Andrea is lying flat on the bed, almost slumped in a way, with a massive, jagged gash in her throat, blood still oozing from the wound and staining her blue sleeping bag a sickening purple. 

Calliope freezes for a moment, knuckles white with her grip on the door handle- and then she  _ screams. _

-

Pretty soon, everyone is aware of the situation - those who weren't woken by Calliope's fearful scream had been hurriedly woken by their cabinmates- either out of fear that something could have happened to them as well, or just by the general commotion of a campsite full of people who knew this situation far too well already.

Alex is one of the first to bolt over to Cabin 6, his breath coming in panicked gasps.  _ No, not again, please God  _ no,  _ why,  _ he thinks, his brain turning into a scrambled mess of adrenaline, anxiety and unrelenting  _ fear.  _ Tana brings Gabbie and Destorm hot on his heel, the four lovers joining the amassing crowd of unhappy campers outside Cabin 6. Alex knows this situation, he’s reliving it completely,and he’s never been more scared in his  _ life,  _ shaking and trembling and mumbling incoherent sentences that break in half almost immediately. Gabbie reaches him, and immediately lets him slump against her shoulders, and he can feel Destorm and Tana’s hands in his, but they do little to soothe him.

On the porch sits Calliope, quivering and staring into the distance as tears leak down her face. There’s a blanket wrapped around her shaking shoulders, and Liza has a comforting arm wrapped around her as Jesse paces, a distressed look on his face.

Everyone gathered around seems to be a different flavour of heavily shaken-up and disturbed - some seem saddened, some angry, some fearful and most a mixture of any combination of the three.

How is Alex? Alex is on the verge of mental breakdown and collapse, the night he found Joey’s bleeding-out remains on the kitchen floor replaying through his head like a broken record. His face is ashy, and his lips are dry, tongue constantly flicking out to wet them out of instinct. He feels sick to his stomach, leaning on Gabbie’s shoulder so he doesn’t fall over out of shock - and if he does, she’ll catch him. That’s one thing Alex can rely on right now, at least.

Everything is almost too much for Alex right now- even the sound of the quiet distressed murmurs of his friends around him feels like the boom of a bassline deep in his brain.

“Shouldn’t we call for help?” Liza pipes up, keeping one eye on Calliope all the while.

Shane shakes his head, sighing as he leans up against one the porch pillars of Cabin 6. “No can do. I’ve already tried, and there's no signal.”

“But there was plenty last night?”

He shrugs. “It’s just disappeared. Utterly and totally. I’ve checked like everywhere to see if any place in this camp has connection, but nope.”

“...so we can’t get  _ anyone  _ out here to help us?”

“Yep.”

“Okay- why the  _ hell  _ are we staying here? Can we not just,  _ leave? _ ” Jesse questions, eyebrows furrowed.

“Two problems with that,” Safiya answers, clearly still very exhausted. “First of all, how do you suggest we move Andrea without seeming shady as  _ fuck,  _ since we have no idea what, or who, did this... and second, if you go to the camp boundaries, there's a thick layer of smog-looking sort of shit.”

“ _ What?”  _ Jesse stops pacing, turning to her in confusion.

“I have no idea either, but it’s so thick you can’t see through it. We  _ really  _ shouldn’t touch that, or breathe it in for that matter, I reckon. I didn’t touch it, obviously, but… something about it made my hairs stand on end, like it was… warning me to stay away. It’s… strange, I know.” Safiya rubs at her neck awkwardly.

_ “Well, fuck.” _

At this point, Calliope speaks up, quietly, still shaky and tearful. “So… we’re stuck here?”

“Yeah, unfortunately,” Tim confirms, pushing a hand through his dark hair in stress, his eyes churning with stormclouds of thinly veiled emotion.

“W-with whatever, or whomever,  _ killed Andrea?” _

A silence settles over the crowd as they consider that she is  _ right, holy fucking shit they could  _ all  _ be in major trouble here. _

Eva chuckles grimly. “I think we’re dealing with a who, not a what here. Judging- judging by the wound anyway, it’s pretty clear how hard it would be for animal claws to do that. Also, Brooks could have totally fought off a small animal. And a bear wouldn’t have been able to get in the building, would it?”

Tim takes a sharp breath before saying. “Are you implying we should consider the possibility that it was- one of us?” His eyes dart around the circle, the first lights of suspicion visible in his once-cheery eyes.

Eva nods, face solemn.

Murmurs streak through the crowd again, and Alex is only just barely hanging on to sanity, clutching at Gabbie to keep himself upright, breaths shaky and hiccupy with tears that stung at the edges up his eyelids.

Shane speaks up, trying to calm the group, sensing panic and tension bubbling amongst the friends. “Everyone, stay calm. I highly doubt it was one of us, and we’ll all be on the lookout for any more danger so hopefully, this won’t ever happen again. In the meantime, we should go back to sleep, it’s  _ early _ and we all need the rest after tonight. As well as that- does anyone have any suggestions on what we should do with uh- with Andrea’s body? I don’t think Calliope wants to share a room with her any more.”

Calliope shakes her head rapidly, wincing.

“I think we can just wrap her up in her sheets and put her in one of the empty cabins for now?” Matt suggests.

“Good idea,” Shane agrees. “Manny, DeStorm, y’all are strong, can you take care of that?”

Manny looks unhappy at the concept of shifting a wholeass  _ corpse,  _ because that’s  _ gross  _ and used to be one of his friends (which, of course, makes it somehow infinitely worse). DeStorm just nods, face set in grim determination. He turns to Alex, patting him on the back soothingly before he walks over to Manny. They exchange a murmur between themselves and the two men enter the cabin, shoulders tense.

“Everyone back to bed for now, though.” Shane instructs, yawning as he heads back to his own cabin.

“You’ll be okay, Calliope, you can share with me and Jesse for now.” Liza murmurs, as she leads her friend back inside.

Gabbie and Tana gently coax a still shell-shocked Alex to his feet, leading him back into their cabin so they can all get some much-needed rest after a horrific early morning wake up call. Alex can feel their presence, but it doesn’t help him as it did before. 

_ Well,  _ Alex thinks numbly as he stares up at his ceiling, still feeling restless and unable to sleep,  _ at least it can’t get any worse, at least not tonight, right? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wooo hope you enjoyed that we both worked hard to get this to you guys!! just,, Life Is Busy, so dont expect regular updates on this!! <3<3<3
> 
> please leave a comment if you enjoyed, or have a theory, or just want to yell about what happened to andrea!! <3
> 
> Next Chapter: Shot Down and Choked Out


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